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Coming off the heels of a successful 24 year Wall Street career, Mark Tercek, who rose to Managing Director at Goldman Sachs and led the Environmental Markets Group, shifted gears in 2008 to become the CEO of The Nature Conservancy, the world’s largest nonprofit environmental organization (TNC).

TNC tackles key environmental issues and protects 119 million acres (and counting) of land, water and marine life.  TNC has over 4,150 employees operating in 72 countries and the company holds prominent board members like Jack Ma (Founder of Alibaba) and Larry Fink (Founder of BlackRock) just to name a few.

Mark led TNC for 11 years and was the architect of a period of unprecedented growth, which was in part based on expertise he brought from Wall Street. Recently, he stepped down as CEO to explore the next phase of his life. In an intimate and candid discussion, Mark opens up about his time at TNC: The good, the bad and the ugly. He discusses some major lessons learned amidst challenging times and provides wise guidance for other business leaders. 

Mark is also a best-selling author of Nature’s Fortune: How Business and Society Thrive by Investing in Nature in which Bill Clinton had this to say: “By breaking conservation down into dollars and cents, Mark Tercek shows that economic growth and environmental sustainability are not mutually exclusive goals.”

Tune in to listen to the full discussion.

In this episode you will learn about:

• • • CEO challenges
    • Company culture
    • Leadership strategies
    • Keeping employees motivated
    • Rising expectations of people
    • Handling life transitions
    • Nonprofit Organizations
    • Raising capital
    • Leadership mistakes and lessons
    • Climate Change
    • Smart Cities

 

Mark Tercek is the former CEO of The Nature Conservancy (July 2008 – June 2019) the global conservation organization known for its intense focus on collaboration and getting things done for the benefit of people and nature. He is the author of the Washington Post and Publisher’s Weekly bestselling book “Nature’s Fortune: How Business and Society Thrive by Investing in Nature.”

Mark was Partner and Managing Director for Goldman Sachs, where he spent 24 years and launched the firm’s Environmental Markets Group. Inspired by the opportunity to help businesses, governments and environmental organizations work together in new, innovative ways, Mark left Goldman Sachs in 2008 to head up The Nature Conservancy.

Mark served on the New York State 2100 Commission, which was created in the wake of Superstorm Sandy to advise Governor Andrew Cuomo and the state on how to make infrastructure more resilient to future storms. Mark is a member of several boards and councils, including the President’s Advisory Council for Resources for the Future, the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, Harvard Business School’s Social Enterprise Initiative, the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED), the Rockefeller Foundation Economic Council on Planetary Health, Acumen, the Science for Nature and People Partnership (SNAPP), and NatureVest. He also serves on the Williams College Board of Trustees.

Mark earned an M.B.A. from Harvard in 1984 and a B.A. from Williams College in 1979.

Connect with Mark Tercek:

• Website
• Twitter
• Linkedin

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Full Transcription:

Mark Tercek:  I think more people in the private sector should consider transitioning like I did into the social sector. It can be personally very fulfilling.

Tanya:  That’s Mark Tercek, former managing partner at Goldman Sachs and CEO of The Nature Conservancy. The leading environmental organization which protects 119 million acres of land, water, marine life, and holds prominent board members like Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba and Larry Fink, founder of BlackRock among others. Mark is the bestselling author of The Nature’s Fortune: How Business and Society Thrive by Investing in Nature which Bill Clinton had this to say, “By breaking conservation down into dollars and cents, Mark Tercek shows that economic growth and environmental sustainability are not mutually exclusive goals.”

Mark Tercek:  Moreover, I think people with good private sector backgrounds can add a lot to the non-profit or social sector. The people in the non-profit sector are of course very, very good. Skillful, smart, hard-working, but it’s good always I think to mix things up. Mix up experience and skill set. I like to encourage people to consider this transition. I’m happy to tell you how I did it. In my case, I’ve always been a city person. I grew up in the city of Cleveland, Ohio, and I mostly lived in cities. As you know, I became an investment banker and so I lived mostly in New York. Also, in Tokyo for a while. In my whole life, I did a lot of stuff outdoors of course, but I was not really a nature person. My wife Amy has the same background.

Anyway, we became parents. We have four kids and when we lived in New York as parents, we thought we should expose our kids to the outdoors. Initially, that meant one day trips to local parks, and then we kept getting more and more ambitious. I remember especially when my kids were still young, some adventurous trips in places like Belize and Costa Rica, that really woke us up as a group, four kids, two parents to the wonders and joys of nature. That was part of it. I just rather late in life discovered how fantastic it was to spend time in the great outdoors. Then I’m a little bit of a geek. I started reading lots of nature books and on some of our trips we pay a little extra and have a guide. The geek in me and the parent in me and just the human in me, got very interested in nature.

By the way, I think that’s a good story to tell because I think there is an inner environmentalist in everyone or at least almost everyone, and we environmentalists just have to unlock that. Anyway, that was part one. As a parent, I got very interested in nature. As an investment banker, I worked for 24 years at Goldman Sachs and I know after the financial crisis, Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street firms had lots of critics, and to some large degree, that’s there. Wall Street didn’t get everything right. For myself, 24 years in Wall Street, by and large, I worked with honorable colleagues and four honorable clients. I was one of those people – I’m still one of those people who thinks that broadly speaking, business can be a force for good.  Again, not everybody agrees with me but that’s my view based on experience.

These two interests came together. I became more aware of environmental challenges and I thought business could be a force for good. I got interested in business as a potential solution for environmental challenges in general, and especially climate change. In the meantime, I was marching on and I’ve been at Goldman Sachs for a very long time, 24 years. I had a wonderful experience at Goldman Sachs I think every day, but I was thinking, at some point I should move on and try to do something else based on everything I learned here. I had this very vague and very undeveloped idea that I would leave Goldman and go off and somehow or other become an environmentalist, but it wasn’t a good idea. When my boss at the time, Hank Paulson learned of this, Hank knew much more about environmental organizations than me. He said to me, “Boy, that’s not a very good plan, Mark. I have a better idea. Why don’t you not leave Goldman and instead stay here and build an environmental effort for the firm.”

This was in late 2005. Today that’s a very conventional idea but back then it was a pretty radical idea. It was Hank’s good idea. He just thought to be a leading global investment bank, we should have expertise and capabilities in the environmental area. I agreed to do that, and Hank and I started together but then he left to become Secretary of the Treasury under President Bush. I went on to do that and we did lots of things in that division, but mostly we were trying to make the case that it made good business sense for Goldman Sachs to embrace environmental issues. Then later, it made good sense for our client. Then I really became a believer that business could be a force for good. I learned a tremendous amount in that job.

One day, a headhunter called me up not to recruit me, that’s for sure. A headhunter called me up to say, “We’re doing a search for TNC’s next CEO. Do you have any good ideas on who would be a good CEO?” I said, “Well, as a matter of fact I do.” I nominated myself. Almost everyone I knew who knew anything about the environmental movement, they took pity on me. They said, “Oh, Mark. Poor Mark. They’re never going to hire a Wall Street banker to be the head of TNC.” I thought the tip for me was really good. I really worked hard and pursued the job. This was now the beginning first quarter of 2008 and at that point in time, there was beginning to be a lot of discussion about whether financial markets could facilitate or encourage environmental progress. Imagine I emphasize that in my interviews then anyway, lo and behold, I got the job. That’s how I got from Goldman Sachs to The Nature Conservancy.

Oh, I left out, by the way, I had many mentors who helped me along the way and I’ll always be grateful to those people. It’s been a really wonderful experience for me, and I think bringing that private sector background to The Nature Conservancy added a lot. Again, there were plenty of people – virtually everybody at TNC knew more about being an environmentalist than I did but I knew some other things. It’s been a great experience, and for your listeners, people don’t have to try to become a CEO or get a full-time job. You can volunteer. You can serve on boards. You can help with certain projects. You can be a donor. I think more private sector people should try to roll up their sleeves, solve some big problems. Your business skills can make a very big difference provided they’re humble and they’re willing to acknowledge all the things they don’t know, and there they can turn to their colleagues in the non-profit sector.

Tanya:  Yeah. No, I wouldn’t agree more. I also am a parent. I have three children, three girls under three years old. Somehow the idea of how am I going to leave this planet to my children became a really big concern when they were born. To your point, unlocking that inner environmentalist in everybody and the importance of everybody individually really taking a leadership and doing what they can is more important than ever, I believe. Just so that we get a scope of how big TNC is, how much capital has the organization raised since 1951 which was when it was founded? How much capital on average do you deploy each year and how many people work either full time or on a volunteer basis?

Mark Tercek:  About TNC’s size, the best way – non-profit accounting is a little bit complicated, and then for The Nature Conservancy, even more so because we occasionally do these huge projects. They’re really capital projects but they show up on our income statement. I think the best way to measure a non-profit size is by operating budget, or another way you can do it is by the amount of money you raise. When I joined The Nature Conservancy – let’s use that last measure. When I joined The Nature Conservancy, my first full year, almost a full year, 11 months, was the year ending June 2009. That’s our fiscal year end in June. That year we raised about $375 million in donations, so big. That’s big for a non-profit, but in the year just ended in June 2019, so exactly 10 years later, we raised a little bit over $750 million. I’m pretty proud of that. That grown is almost $400 million. It’s more than doubling the size. It’s about doubling the size.

Tanya:  That’s an amazing accomplishment.

Mark Tercek:  Yes. The Nature Conservancy is big. Another way to measure the size of a non-profit I think is with its number of people. Today, The Nature Conservancy has 4,150 people operating in 72 countries all over the world. The Nature Conservancy is a very big NGO. Now size isn’t everything. There are some really great small NGOs and they’re superb in the environmental field. The size can allow you to do some things that other organizations can’t do. We really tried in my time at The Nature Conservancy to emphasize doing big things. Often things that other organizations wouldn’t be able to do.

Tanya:  Like what?

Mark Tercek:  There’s a lot of stuff I could mention. Today, The Nature Conservancy tries to do four big things. I’m really proud of that. We’re very much more focused than we used to be, but one of the four things we call protecting nature and by that we mean buying stuff to just save it forever. Sometimes it’s hard to do anything more clever than that, but there are still extraordinary places that can be saved. The Nature Conservancy began as a land trust. We were the first land trust, but today, there are many great land trusts across the US. Sometimes the deal is so bigger or so complex, if we don’t do it, no one else will. In my time at TNC, almost 11 years, we’ve spent more than $1 billion of our own money protecting more than 13 million acres. Mostly in the US but not exclusively. Overseas, it’s hard to buy things, although sometimes you can do that.

I think most of those deals, if we hadn’t done them, they wouldn’t have happened, the conservation deals. Instead the land would have been sold. For example, right after I joined The Nature Conservancy, I was brand new. I really didn’t know what I was doing. I joined in mid-July 2008. In August 2008, we had my first board meeting, and we approved at that meeting a purchase of land in Montana for sale, and the purchase price was $500 million, half a billion dollars. I was brand new. I thought wow, this is like working at Goldman Sachs again. I’m still a merchant banker. Now I’m a merchant banker for nature.

The land that we purchased is on the order of 350,000 acres, if I remember right. It was so called checkerboard land. There would be an acre here, and acre there. It was land that was being sold by Plum Creek which was a spin-off of the Burlington Northern Railroad, but the land the Burlington Northern owned was interspersed. Otherwise, protected land. By buying that land, we really protected millions of acres. We wanted to do so very badly because all of the species that were there when Lewis and Clark explored the region, they’re still there. It’s an extraordinarily beautiful place. The choice we saved was, well, do we take a risk and do a half a billion-dollar deal on our own balance sheet or not. There was plenty of reason not to do it. That was a big risk to take, but then those acres would have been developed, and second homes, that kind of thing. That whole million acre plus ecosystem would have been spoiled so we stepped up and did that one.

Now that one our timing wasn’t so great because that was August 2008. In September 2008, the financial crisis really exploded. The Lehman Brothers and AIG went bust. Working our way through that deal sure got to be quite a headache, but we were big boys about it. If you’re in the deal, you can’t expect every deal to go smoothly. We still do deals like that and we’re proud of it because no other organization can really do it. They’re easy for people to understand so we can grow our supporters and they’re very tangible, they’re very visible. They’re the kinds of – if my grandchildren visit that area someday, and they learn that TNC did that when I was the boss, they’ll be proud of me. We do stuff like that. To round that out, the other areas of focus are climate change, food. By food I mean sustainable ranching, sustainable farming, sustainable fishery, and then cities. Today, half the world’s people live in cities, soon it will be three quarters.

We try to do four big things. That’s another thing I’m proud of. We’re a big sprawling, highly decentralized organization but we concluded, in order to be more than the sum of our parts, we should be very, very focused. Those are our four areas of focus. Each has a couple of strategies beneath it. That was hard to do because it’s very hard for a non-profit not to take on too much. Every day all these worthy ideas come in over the [00:14:58]. Would you do this? Would you do that? Sometimes money comes with that. Sometimes some of our best supporters they ask us to do that, but we learned and I felt very strongly about this when I was CEO, that we shouldn’t take on too much. If you spread yourself too thin, results aren’t what they should be. We call those [00:15:18] a focus or shared conservation agenda. Today, I would say The Nature Conservancy is a behemoth, a global giant, a strong balance sheet, great people, great deal-making skills, great time, and all of those resources are pointed in a very focused way at four big outcomes.

Tanya:  I love the fact that you’re focusing because with focus you can really drill down on the impact and then the impact you can measure. That’s brilliant. Now speaking about leadership, I would imagine first of all going from the private sector to the non-profit sector that’s touch. Then not only that but really leading a global organization that is 68 years old more or less. That is tackling arguably one of the toughest challenge we face which is conserving our planet. What were some of the leadership – first of all, what were some of the challenges that you faced when you stepped in? How do you organize yourself? How long did it take you to really get a foothold on what you were doing? I’m assuming there was a big ramp-up time. How did you deal with leading change in the organization?

Mark Tercek:  That’s a great question. At the beginning, I did some things right, I think, and I got some things wrong. By the way, you need to be very humble in these kinds of jobs. One of my former colleagues at The Nature Conservancy might not thing I’m humble, but I feel humble about the job. I should also say right off the bat I’m really proud of the big things we accomplished over the 11 years I was CEO. Everything that went well, everything we accomplished, it was hugely a team effort. When things go well, as CEO it’s a big deal. You get a lot of credit. Look, I worked very hard. I really tried my very, very best, but everything that we did that went well, it was a huge team effort. My colleagues were tremendous. Our supporters were awesome and generous. It was a team effort.

When I started, I think I got off to a pretty good start because I knew I didn’t know very much and it was right out of the Goldman Sachs playbook. Whenever I got a new job, I got a legal pad and I started meeting with senior people one by one and I just asked them, “Hey, what should I know? What should my priorities be? What should I do?” I tried as hard as I could to say very little and just listen. That’s always a good way to do things. Now, regrettably, I don’t always remember to do that but at the beginning I did. I’m with senior people. I also always say at the end, “Who else should I talk to?”  I talk to lots of people. I got their two cents from the organization, their point of view which was really helpful. I started out listening well which I think got me off to a good start.

Then the financial crisis happened, and I said okay, I’ve seen this movie before because of Wall Street. It was always very [00:18:19]. I concluded we needed to restructure. Unfortunately, that meant we had to downsize. We eliminated 400 positions on the team. Now they weren’t all filled so it wasn’t – we didn’t lay 400 people off but that was really difficult and TNC had never done it before. I think I didn’t know how to do that, and I think people took some comfort from that. By the way, we eliminated – what we did is we cut the programs that we thought were the least vitally important and it was painful to do that, but it was when I first began to really understand the benefits of focus. We right-sized on our best programs. Less than a year after that downsizing, we reduced our budget by almost $100 million, almost a quarter. Less than one year later, we had regrown to be bigger than that amount. I think that was because we were focused. We had doubled-down on our strengths.

Anyway, it always has to – wasn’t okay in the first month but you can imagine, I was under a lot of pressure. It was a very tense environment at that time. I forgot to keep listening and I developed some bad habits like not listening well, cutting people off, acting like I always had the best ideas, etc. It’s embarrassing to say all this. Then [00:19:38], I’m not stupid. I could tell on the interpersonal front things weren’t going so well. I wanted to be a good leader. I really did. I got a coach. One of my friends is an executive coach but he has never coached me. Marshall Goldsmith, he’s a very prominent coach. He came in and talked to my board and talked to the people I worked with and then he helped me quickly understand that I was being a jerk. I needed to listen better, things like that. I got back on track, I think, but it continued to be volatile. These are humbling jobs. We work seven days a week, around the clock, all this pressure, very – people are different than in the private sector. Different expectation from their boss. Harder to measure things in the non-profit world.

Tanya:  You just said something interesting. What are the different expectations than in the private sector?

Mark Tercek:  In hindsight, it made working on Wall Street seem so easy. I ran some pretty big business units at Goldman Sachs and with a piece of paper or two, I could show you exactly how we were doing. I had market share. I had feeds. I got cash flows. I could discount projected cash flows. The data was so crystal clear and immediate. I knew how our competitors were doing. Then I can do that also person by person to measure the productivity of everybody on the team. Furthermore, on Wall Street, I could motivate people the old-fashioned way. If they really worked hard and got their jobs done, they could get a big bonus. I can name them managing director or partner. I had all these tools available on Wall Street. Great metrics, great rewards.

In the non-profit world, also in the environmental world, it’s much more difficult to measure exactly how well you’re doing, and we specialize in The Nature Conservancy in natural intervention. For example, we might restore a watershed which means improving the forest for example in order to improve the quality of water, but it will take years to measure that and show that. You don’t have the same data. Now you can work around that. You can use [00:21:50] to measure things as best you can, but it’s not as easy as in the business world. You can’t measure your peer organization. We wouldn’t call them competitors but we compete in the NGO space. It’s also less clear there. You don’t have a stock price every day. You don’t have Wall Street to handle it. Measurement is more difficult, and reward is more difficult. You don’t have bonuses, promotion to partner, those kinds of things.

The non-profit world, you have to be creative and disciplined, and work a little harder at measurement. Then in order to incentivize people, you have to work harder to understand – you have to work hard to provide them the rewarding and fulfilling career opportunities that will motivate them to do their job. I now think that’s a better way to lead than the Wall Street model. I’m oversimplifying of course but it’s hard. It’s hard work and I didn’t know all that when I started.

Tanya:  Right. No, absolutely. It’s certainly I think intrinsic motivation is way stronger than material motivation. It seems like you would have to lead definitely.

Mark Tercek:  Yeah. I’ll comment on that. Harvard Business Review, different kinds of business gurus, they tell us in the non-profit space, you can learn from the for-profit world, and there’s a lot of truth to that. I think most of non-profits try hard to do that, but the for-profit world could learn a lot from the non-profit world. There’s less discussion about that, but intrinsic motivation, that would be one of the areas for the need to provide a really strong and satisfying and robust culture. There my colleagues at The Nature Conservancy were very demanding of management [00:23:36] and sometimes very critical. They were right. That is the job of the management team and the CEO. If you get those things right as best you can, that makes for a stronger organization that can get more done. I think that would be true in the for-profit space too.

Tanya:  Yeah. It’s amazing because I’ve now spoken with a number of leaders that lead global organizations who have coached a number of them too, and it’s a lonely job and everybody struggles. Like you said, it’s very humbling and there’s a huge journey, a personal journey that people have to go through in order to increase their effectiveness. There is just no way around it. What were some of the biggest things that you have to deal with in leading such a big and established organization [00:24:33]?

Mark Tercek:  Yeah. Some things came natural to me and I think the team and I did well. We wanted to grow because the world faces such great environmental challenges. I mentioned to you that we increased our fund raising this past year almost to $800 million. It’s extraordinary. We have a 7 billion – the organization has a $7 billion capital campaign underway and it’s just about finished. It will close soon. Fund raising was an area we focused on, and I also mentioned to you a focused agenda. I always was nervous that we would be distracted or just with lower productivity if we were trying to beat too many things at once. We worked very hard to be focused in those four areas, those four priority areas.

I also thought to achieve full success, we needed more people on our side. Some environmentalists try to play to the – they preach to the choir. They really go after the group that agrees with them most and they’re very critical of others. By the way, there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s a rule for that kind of strategy. At The Nature Conservancy, historically, and under my leadership, we wanted to be a so-called big tent. We wanted to be inclusive and find common ground with the first groups. We thought that would be a pathway toward more success. We made a lot of progress there. Then as a financial person, as an investment banker, it seems to me crazy that most non-profit only use equity capital. Now equity for a non-profit is donor capital or government grant. Of course, that’s the most precious capital but companies that always would make sense I would think to lower you overall cost of capital and have more capital by borrowing low cost [00:26:29] finance from investors. We call that impact capital in The Nature Conservancy has been a real leader in that space. I’m very proud of it.

There are a bunch of things I’m proud of. I could go on and on. What went less well these last number of months, last four or five months were difficult ones for me because we discovered at the senior management and I think board level that the culture wasn’t as strong as I thought it was, and everyone wasn’t as happy as I thought it was. The background goes like this. For a number of years, we’ve known that this is true for all environmental organizations. Then I’ll just speak about The Nature Conservancy. We’ve known that we needed to be a more diverse place where all people could achieve success, fulfillment, etc. That’s a big challenge. With regard to women, we were regularly being advised by colleagues that we needed to make it a better culture for women.

Over the last number of years, we launched a number of programs. This was a big priority for me. I always said in my speeches to the organization that this was my highest priority. We hired an equity and an inclusion and diversity officer, and built a little team around her. We introduced a bunch of new training programs. We introduced protocols and requirements for recruiting. For any job you needed to have a diverse pool of candidates. You needed to have a diverse panel of interviewers. We did a number of things like that and then we paid close attention to the data. I’ll just talk about gender for a minute as the example. 60% of the people at The Nature Conservancy are women, 44% of the executive team, the most senior team that report and work closely with me was up sharply from about 25% just a few years ago. 60% of senior hires in 2015 were women.

We thought we were making good progress on these fronts. Then we also do a rigorous annual people survey. We have 4,100 people around the world. 86% of my colleagues participated. That in and of itself the experts tell us is a sign of real engagement. 94% of those people said they were proud to work at TNC. 88% said they would recommend TNC as a place to work to their friend. 88% said they were satisfied. The scores on Glassdoor, the internet website that rates companies by employee survey, scores there are even higher in the mid 90%. Although I thought we had a lot of room for improvement, I thought we were [00:29:24] making good progress. Then the last few months, we learned that, at least for some colleagues, there’s deep dissatisfaction. The team is on that now.

I think it’s good the people who spoke up, it’s good they spoke up. That’s how you make progress, but in hindsight, even though all this data was available to me that I just noted, and even though I had been continually being advised, we need to make more progress, I didn’t totally get it. I think as a CEO I learned I should probably have been spending more time with critics in settings where these people learn to speak up and I should have listened better. Live and learn, nobody’s going to get everything right. The Nature Conservancy today is really focused on those areas as the top priority, and my guess is that will make the organization an even stronger and better one.

Tanya:  Yeah. No, absolutely. That whole situation is so tricky because, like you said, almost everything was pointing to that things were really good and although you have to make some more progress, there were some already great improvements and achievements that were being made. Also, there’s this thing where oftentimes the executive team or even the CEO is shielded from problems that are happening internally which can be a real sucker punch. What do you think was missing for you to have seen that?

Mark Tercek:  Yeah. It’s a great question. I don’t know if I totally get it, but I do feel like in hindsight, I think I was too aloof. I was trying to be an effective CEO so I had all these senior people running different parts of the organization, and I didn’t want to get in their way. Of course, I was busy and I wanted to be productive, and I didn’t want to be redundant with other people’s efforts, etc. I think in hindsight I should have found a way, and experienced CEOs do this more than I was doing it. Whenever I went somewhere, I should have had a small informal meeting, figured out what behaviors by me would make it easier for people to speak up, that kind of stuff.

The reason I’m happy to share that is, anybody listening should be – this is like a mea culpa. I think the data that I noted that I was proud of, is accurate so both things can be true. In aggregate, people can be enormously proud of the organization and mostly fulfilled or even very fulfilled, but a small number of people can be deeply dissatisfied. Then others who are suggesting they’re fully fulfilled, at the same time there are areas of disgruntlement, etc. You just have to work harder to really understand what’s going on.

Tanya:  Yeah. No, absolutely. Certainly not [00:32:22] area.

Mark Tercek:  The other thing is, times are changing. People’s expectations are rising. I think here non-profits might be a little bit ahead of the private sector. I know some of the people on my board really superb, sophisticated, smart business people, they were surprised by how big an issue these matters became. Again, it’s an area where I think the private sector can learn from the non-profit sector. I think being even more attentive than I was to these issues is the appropriate leadership response.

Tanya:  If you had to do it again, what would be the one thing that you would approach or one of the ways that you would approach solving this issue?

Mark Tercek:  I think I made a mistake and allowed myself to be perceived as an aloof, not easy person to talk to. That’s not really my self-image. Lots of folks in the organization at all levels who I know well would say, gosh Mark, you’re a down to earth person, you’re easy to talk to, you’re no problem, you’re generally interested in our views. I don’t think I conveyed that to the organization as a whole, and on this particular topic I just think I wasn’t as in touch as I should be. My advice to other CEOs or senior executive is don’t let that happen to you. Sounds kind of obvious but I think what it would have meant is I would have had to spend much more time and energy doing that. Meeting with and listening to people, and I wouldn’t have to – that would have had to been a higher priority than some of the other things I was doing.

Tanya:  Yeah, because the title of CEO, and just the scope of your job comes with a lot of power, and that’s scary for a lot of people to come forth with what they’re actually thinking. Even if you come across as somebody that’s down to earth and you share common ground and you’re approachable, that is a real concern for people.

Mark Tercek:  The other thing that’s happening is I think it’s probably a global phenomenon. Staff, employees of all organizations, their expectations are rising. They want more engagement, more fulfillment, and so senior executives, CEOs – and I’m not getting any younger. The world’s different than it was when I got started as a professional. You just need to work hard. The other thing I guess is you need advisors who slap you out when you’re not paying close enough attention. I thought we had that. I don’t need to [00:35:04] with a point but my advice to CEOs especially with private sector is, don’t think that this is something that only happens at universities or non-profits. For sure, I bet [00:35:16] down organizations in the private sector that people are feeling the same way. Even if they’re not speaking up to the same degree.

Tanya:  Yeah. No, absolutely. You brought up your board. You said that your board was really shocked about how big this was. Speaking of that, there’s some pretty prominent people in the TNC board. What was that like for 11 years really interacting with some of those global leaders and entrepreneurs? Incredible people like Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba. Laurence Fink, founder of BlackRock, and the list goes on.

Mark Tercek:  Yeah, the list goes on so it was a real honor and a joy for me to work with that great board, and to have a active role in recruiting those board members. The Nature Conservancy has very good governance. There are term limits. A board member serves three, three-year terms. You could opt out after three or six years, but after nine years, you have to go. It’s always sad. Some non-profits don’t do this because they don’t want to lose great board members, but I actually think this is a really good discipline. Therefore, your board stays fresh and dynamic, and you’re always having to bring in new board members.

Tanya:  You mentioned Jack Ma and Larry Fink. I probably shouldn’t comment on individuals but of course, there are two who, because of their prominence were the kind of people who could not only add a lot as advisors to me as board members, and by participating with solo board members, that they can help spread the word and build more momentum solving global environmental challenges. TNC is extremely ambitious in China. We’ve gotten a lot done there, but there’s a lot more we want to do. You can imagine having Jack Ma on your global board or cheering our China chapter board. That makes a big difference. He’s a person with a lot of clout and influence in China or another goal for The Nature Conservancy, and a very high priority for me personally was to influence the global investment community especially the institutional investment community to prioritize environmental considerations as investors.

That’s also a goal for Larry Fink as CEO of BlackRock. You can imagine an individual like him can add so much to our board. Over the course of my 11 years at TNC, I got a lot of criticism toward being too friendly to the business community. Look, I always said our critics are our friends. Our critics generally were people who want great environmental outcomes and didn’t agree with our approach. It always made sense I thought to pay attention to them. Maybe they see something that we didn’t see. On this point, I don’t agree with that. We’ve made a lot of progress, and not only TNC, other organizations too, in getting companies and investors much more mindful about or attentive to environmental considerations. That’s a source of progress to date and I think it can be a huge source of progress going forward if it’s fully utilized. I think extremely highly of these people and was really grateful that Larry, Jack and many, many others agreed to work hard and spend the time it takes to serve on TNC’s board.

Tanya:  Yeah. No, I would imagine that having those big players on your side just makes opening doors a little easier.

Mark Tercek:  Yeah.

Tanya:  In terms of conservation, what was the biggest challenge that you faced in trying to get all the parties aligned. Like you mentioned, some of these projects are enormous and there’s a lot of players in place. How do you get alignment and what are some of these challenges?

Mark Tercek:  I’ll tell you what I think. I didn’t know this when I joined TNC. You can imagine. When I joined TNC after 24 years on Wall Street, I came in guns blazing thinking private sector initiatives would be the key to unlock progress. The private sector initiatives that I really pushed for with my colleagues, they did unlock a lot of progress. I came to understand even more important than these private sector volunteer initiatives, more important is government policy. Smart, regulatory policies, smart rules. The most important thing going forward to achieve TNC’s environmental or conservation goals, or really any right-thinking person’s environmental goals. We need better government policy. Everybody whether it’s TNC or it’s a business person or you name it, everybody has got to get more focused on politics, engage more, push for the rules and regulations that we’ll need to get us where we need to be. That would be, I would say is the highest priority of all.

Tanya:  I would imagine that that’s extremely difficult to do with our current government especially with major setbacks like the Paris Accord and some other things that Trump is unraveling which is so frustrating.

Mark Tercek:  Very frustrating and also politics these days just isn’t very attractive. You turn on the TV and you see this partisan polarizing, fighting and it turns you off. A lot of business people feel this way. I know I felt that way when I joined The Nature Conservancy. We have to rise above that. Democracy of participation support. If we can get more and more people voting, more and more people engaged, pushing for the policies we need, I think that’s the way to make progress. The Nature Conservancy is going that. I’m proud of all the new initiatives that are underway. Climate change was a low priority when I joined. Today it’s as high as any other priority.

The Nature Conservancy is a non-partisan organization. We have friends on both sides with an eye on Capitol Hill. We’re respected for our track record and our [00:41:21]. All of that is being put to work to champion pragmatic policy. Anyway, the broad environmental movement will need to do more and more of that. The second constraint I would say is money. Conservation is very capital intensive. As we talked about, TNC has really ramped up at fund raising. It will soon close a $7 billion capital campaign. That’s breathtaking.

Tanya:  What does that mean to close a capital campaign? I don’t know what that…

Mark Tercek:  We tried to raise because this is so expensive and there’s so much to do. We launched a few years ago a campaign that was an effort by all of TNC to raise this money. $4 million of pure philanthropy, just donations. $1 billion of plan giving. That’s putting us in – somebody’s putting us in their will. $1 billion of impact capital. I talked about that earlier. That’s that new investor source capital to [00:42:19] donor capital. Then finally, $1 billion of government grants all over the world that would flow directly to TNC. That adds up to seven. The plan giving number is done on the 1 billion. The $4 billion of donations I think they’re 90% of the way they are now. The government funding I figure 85% of the way. Impact capital only a third is done but in this current year, I think a couple, $500 million on that order of magnitude will be done. The campaign will be finished.

[00:42:52] the rallying campaign to raise a lot of money. Problem though is, every time we get a lot of money, but in fact not really, not for an organization in 72 countries with 4100 people. This notion of unlocking other capital through impact financing, through blended finance, working with the World Banks of the world. Working with investors and their ESG funds. That kind of thing, [00:43:21] will be a big chapter ahead for the TNCs of the world. I’m proud under my leadership we got off to a very good start. I think TNC is a real leader in that space. We’re just getting started. By the way, this could be interesting to your listeners. Now if you’re a private sector person with a finance background, an investor background, or just a very good business person, then you could imagine. The environmental movement as well as other non-profit sectors, they’ll need people with business expertise. You can dive in and help.

The example of that is in the technology area. We were worrying that boy, we didn’t – nobody on the team including me, we weren’t really people with [00:44:06]. Look at the private sector and we see how Uber changes transportation. Spotify changes music distribution. Airbnb changes lodging. We wondered, guess what will be the technology innovations that change conservation and how are we going to get on top of that? TNC in this past year partnered with Techstars, a Colorado based VC firm, a great one, and we raised a $10 million seed capital fund. With that money, three years in a row, TNC just did a year one, we’ll back-up 10 brand new start-ups a year to that focus on achieving our mission. In year one, I think eight of the ten have already gotten their next round of financing. We’re off to a very good start.

What was cool about this is, again, this I would say would have been a heavy lift for the TNC team all by itself although we’ve added some great technology people now. We invited technology veterans to help us as mentors to these companies. Then our team, the TNC teams, long-time conservationists are working side by side with start-up teams and getting the cultural infusion of that start-up approach. It really is one of these win-win things. It’s another example about how people in the for-profit space, in this case, start-up people, can help NGOs. I think you can do this on other sectors. The people doing that, the volunteers on this program seem to me to be so happy and so fulfilling. That would be something that people in your audience should consider doing.

Tanya:  Yeah. No, that’s amazing and actually really brilliant move on your part. Just partner with tech because yes, you’re right. There’s been so many really fundamental shift in the way that we live our lives because of the development of technology. It’s really smart that you anticipated that.

Mark Tercek:  Can I make one comment about that?

Tanya:  Yeah, sure.

Mark Tercek:  One of the things over my time at TNC I sometimes was criticized for taking risks, for trying to do too many new things. Sometimes people will say, “Why do you have to change so much? Why can’t we do the old stuff?” Now, I noted earlier we did more than a billion dollars of land acquisitions over the last 10 years. We did plent of stuff the old-fashioned way although we did in a very big way. I think it’s important in the social sector to try new things. When I first joined TNC, I was getting challenged about this by a lot of traditional TNC supporters, and I would often say to them at the time – they were usually business people of one type of another. I’d say, what’s your favorite company? What companies do you admire the most? At that time, they would often answer apple. I said, “Well, you know, apple – I think the reason you admire them is they’re always doing new things. They didn’t just stay with the Macintosh, they got into iPad that they got into famously and extraordinarily. The iPhone it’s just one thing after another. That’s what a great organization does.

That’s one thing I’m proud of at my time at TNC. We took on a lot of new stuff. Yes, it did present some risks and everything we tried didn’t work although I don’t think there was much downside. That would be a message to people in your audience too, and it’s another way business people can help non-profit. Don’t be afraid of risks. Be careful. Okay, [00:47:30] and don’t take more risks than you can bear, but keep trying to innovate and find new things. In the environmental field, it would be crazy to just do things the way we always did because we know we’re falling behind. We’re not winning. It’s going to take some new initiatives to get over the hump.

Tanya:  Yeah, and doing things to your point, a little better, incrementally better or more of improving how we’re doing things or incremental improvements will not solve the issues that we face today. We need a breakthrough, a big breakthrough. Yeah, a breakthrough calls a different way of looking at it. I totally get that. You mentioned one of the four areas of focus for TNC was cities.

Mark Tercek:  Yes.

Tanya:  I think that I read by 2050, two-thirds of people living will be living in cities. What is driving that shift and what are some of the concerns around that?

Mark Tercek:  Why are people moving to cities? It’s a complicated question. Better suited to a social scientist than me. If you look at a place like China and India, those are places where the huge shifts in population are underway. Agriculture is becoming more productive and automated and people living in the rural areas want the exciting life that urban situations provide. Just like happened in decades past in the US, but even here in the US there are social challenges that go with it. You see in America that the small number of cities that are growing populations fast and a lot of the middle of the country is being hollowed out. It’s a complicated phenomenon. For environmental outcome, it’s probably a positive thing. Concentrating people in cities provided they’re made to be sustainable cities is probably a positive.

That’s why TNC wants to be in the space. I’m really very proud. When I joined TNC there was no Cities Program. I told you I was a city person and it seemed to be there was no reason why we shouldn’t be in cities but there were so many reasons why we should be. In the grand scheme of things, getting cities right is one of the huge levers for making the progress we want to make. In this case, we launched the Cities Program and sometimes for venerable organizations like TNC, it’s hard to launch a new thing, but in the case of our Cities Program, it was immediately embraced. We learned a lot over 68 years by working with nature and how to bring nature into cities. There’s also a lot about cities that we don’t know as much about so it requires being humble and good partnerships. I would say the team is doing pretty well. More and more people in the world live in cities so we’re working where people are. That’s good for our overall business model.

We talked about earlier the environmental movements desire to be a more diverse constituency. Working in cities allows you to do that. You can make sure your projects serve more diverse community. There are a million benefits and a million good reasons to do it. It’s a big change. It’s way too early for an organization like TNC to brag but it’s not too early to observe that we’re off to a very good start. There’s one cool project that we’re doing in Lexington, Kentucky. I keep saying we’re doing. I left TNC but it’s a habit. It’s a cool project. We’ve had this notion at TNC that trees and cities will do a lot of good things. They’ll sequester carbon, they’ll lower temperatures, going to help manage storm water runoff, but we also have this point of view that trees will absorb a particulate pollution and improve health outcomes in cities.

In Lexington, Kentucky, we’re working with the university there. We’re seeking to prove it. TNC got a grant from the National Institute of Health, and they’re doing massive tree planting in parts of the from the national institute of health and they’re doing massive tree plantings impart of the city and we’re recruiting citizens to participate for real time helpdesk and so people are – we’re trying to see whether people who live where all the new trees are improve their health situation. Then as soon as the test was over, we will plant the same amount of trees in the entire city for reasons of equity. I think it’s a really cool project because we’re trying to demonstrate with good [00:52:09] that trees are naturally good for environmental reasons. They’ll make people healthier. That’s one of the strategies for scaling environmental progress. Don’t only measure the environmental outcome, measure the health outcome, measure the economic outcome and get credit for all the good things that come from these investments.

Tanya:  Talking about health outcomes, more recently – I’m based in New York City. I keep getting these alerts that the air quality is not great, and that the people with sensitive lungs, this could be an issue. I have twin girls that are about to turn two and they were born at 28 weeks and had respiratory issues. I never thought that air quality in my lifetime would be a determining factor of where I live, and the decisions I make in my life. I love the fact that you are really – You launched that initiative and you guys have measurable — you’re measuring the impact of it from all facets. That’s incredible. I hope that – is [00:53:21] going to come to New York City?

Mark Tercek:  Yes, he’s done a few. He’s extremely active and ambitious in New York City and working on comparable programs in New York. A thing that we’re doing in New York, back when Hurricane Sandy occurred. I served on Governor Cuomo’s committee. The question in that case was how does New York State and New York City protect itself from future Sandys and of course, there will need to be a lot of investment and infrastructure. What TNC argues for and what I argued for as a member of Governor Cuomo’s commission is green infrastructure. Think for example of coastal areas where you need to worry about sea-level rise and storm, often it’s the case that coastal ecosystem, dunes, mangroves, wet land. It can be very low cost and very effective ways to build robust resilience, protection from these storms. Also, secure a bunch of environmental benefit.

To Governor Cuomo’s credit, as the time it was Mayor Bloomberg but Mayor de Blasio continues to embrace that. These kinds of initiatives are really being well received. In Washington DC where I live, we have a big storm water issue. Whenever it rains very, very hard, which happens more and more often now. All the grime of DC flows right into the Anacostia or the Potomac River. When it rains, in enough volume, the sewers overflow, so it’s really horrific. All that water flows into the Chesapeake Bay. It’s a terrible environment challenge. Now in Washington DC, we’re doing green infrastructure in the city. Planting trees and other kinds of garden if you will that will capture storm water, slow it down, pool the water really more slowly. When it flows into the river it’s much cleaner, and all that solution has been filtered out. Nature can do all these practical things. It’s not just the [00:55:18]. In this book I wrote, Nature’s Fortune, I argued, nature is the best investment opportunity we have.

Tanya:  I believe it. I absolutely believe it. Just as a light [00:55:31]. Do you have a funny story of meeting somebody influential?

Mark Tercek:  It was a fun part of my job. I’ll probably miss this part. TNC is a really well-respected global organization with a great track record. Imagine, what an honor to be the CEO and to represent the organization. I met so many great people. One anecdote that comes to mind was not too long ago. I would participate in the World Economic Forum in Davos every year. It’s really a productive week for somebody with a job like mine. In this last occasion, the World Economic Forum asked me to moderate a panel and it was about all the invest in nature topics that I like to talk about with some business people and some environmentalist on the panel.

We needed a star to draw a big crowd. The star they got on my panel was Jane Goodall, who of course I know and respect and everyone loves. What a tremendous person. What a great embodiment of what it means to be a great environmental champion. Jane was on my panel so of course it would be Jane I would ask the first question to. Davos gave me these questions. I had some wonky question. I don’t even remember what it was right now. I asked Jane that question, and she turns to me and she goes, “Mark.” She speaks very elegantly, “Mark, why would you ever ask me such a stupid, boring question like that? Why don’t you ask me about something that really matters? What? You’re a vegan, Mark and I’m a vegan. Why don’t you ask me why I’m a vegan?” She turns to the audience and she goes, “Look at Mark. Look at me. Don’t we look great? We feel great too. That’s because we’re vegan. Guess what, our diet is not just make us look better and feel better. There are much better for the environment. You should all be vegan.” It was like, so powerful although [00:57:25].

Tanya:  Wow.

Mark Tercek:  Doing my job I had so many occasions to work closely with heroes of mine like Jane Goodall. It was really a privilege for me to do so.

Tanya:  Do you feel mentally like you’ve transitioned? You’ve used the word we a lot and you set it to habit. After 11 years of giving everything to TNC, how’s the transition going?

Mark Tercek:  Yeah. It’s a little bit tricky. Yes. For 11 years, I hope people think I did a good job. There are some outcomes we can point to so that’s good. There’s some other stuff that went less well. Okay, I own that. I was CEO, but one thing is for sure. I gave it my all. I couldn’t have worked any harder over the last 11 years. Yeah, it’s hard for me not to say we when I talk about TNC. That will probably stick. Now it’s time for me to look forward and think hard about okay, where can I next position myself to make the biggest and most positive impact. That’s a lot of fun because now I’ve had two really big professional experiences. 25 years at Goldman Sachs. I ran some big businesses. I learned a lot about how business and finance and capital markets work. Then 11 years running TNC during a very ambitious impactful time.

There aren’t really that many people with those two types of experience. Now the question I’m trying to figure out and I’m getting a lot of great advice from friends out there in the real world is, okay, what should I so next. I’m thinking about a few things. One area of great interest to me is, how can I be even more influential in getting business in general and especially the investment community to better understand that to be a smart, long-term investor, requires being very mindful of environmental considerations. Also requires very assertive policy efforts. Imagine you’re an insurance company and you’re worried about the long haul because you’re writing long-term insurance policy. Of course, you’ll want to be really smart about environmental risks or opportunities you might face.

You also want to make sure you’re doing everything you can to have the robust regulatory policy to ensure the best outcome. I think that’s a really big opportunity for a human in time to really go after globally. That’s one of the things I’m thinking about. Another thing on my mind is teaching, Again, I say okay, I’m not getting any younger regrettably. How can use everything I learned, and sometimes in my TNC job I would speak at business school campuses. Business schools are different than when I went to one. Young people at business schools today, of course they want to have successful satisfying careers, but they’re mindful of all these risks and they want their careers to even more strongly overlap with better societal outcomes. Another thing I’m thinking about is okay, maybe I could get in front of that and try to help inform and guide and mentor emerging business people so that business can be of a force for good going forward. Then the last think I’m going to do – this has already started. TNC is such a huge organization doing so many things. I’m already advising some smaller, other smaller but really great environmental orgs with a lot of opportunities, but I welcome ideas. If anybody listened and has some good ideas for me let me know.

Tanya:  You sound like you have a plan. The one thing, I spoke to a lot of founders that sold their companies and then went through this transition period. I actually wrote about it. It’s one of those things that when you stop doing what you’ve been doing for so long, a lot of them experience a loss of self. The biggest advice that I heard was really to allow yourself whatever set period of time to unwind and recoup, and not immediately want to fill the gap with something because you’re just used to running at that same speed all the time. To really take the time to do that. Have you thought about slowing down and really giving yourself space to focus on the next part of your life?

Mark Tercek:  Yes, your comment and your question, they’re very thoughtful. Yes, in my case, I’m used to being very busy and very ambitious. There’s the tendency to want to just keep doing that. It’s only been a few weeks since I left TNC.

Tanya:  Exactly.

Mark Tercek:  Some days are harder than others. I am trying to slow down. I’m trying not to make any big decisions for at least six months. I have a really supportive wife and four supportive kids who are reinforcing that. I’m pretty optimistic about it, but some days are easier. They beat this into us at Goldman Sachs who are young people. Whenever you are trying to do something important to figure something out, we were always encouraged to get out there and get a lot of advice. Challenge your own opinion. I’ve been doing that. In a number ways people have told me slow down, take it easy, catch your breath. Don’t make any decisions for a while. I hear that and I’m going to try to just do that as best I can. The other thing is, there’s so many exiting things to do out there. I go back and forth a little bit but your advice is well taken. Thank you.

Tanya:  Yeah. No, that’s great. Mark, it was an absolute pleasure to have you on the Unmessable Show. How do people get in touch with you?

Mark Tercek:  I think the easiest thing is I’m on Twitter. My Twitter account is my name. Mark Tercek, M-A-R-K T-E-R-C-E-K, and that’s where I post my environmental ideas and blogs and things like that.

Tanya:  Great, awesome. Amazing. Well, thank you so much for so generously giving your time today and I love what you stand for and the good that you’re doing in the world. It’s inspiring.

Mark Tercek:  Thank you very much.

Tanya:  Umessable is recorded in the heart of New York City. A special thanks to all the team involved in producing the show. Visit tanyaprive.com/unmessable to find a transcript of this episode and be sure to subscribe to our newsletter.